LeanLaw vs LexNebulis

LeanLaw provides law firms with timekeeping, billing, trust accounting, payments and financial reporting built around QuickBooks Online. It supports hourly, flat-fee and contingency billing. Trust tools include three-way reconciliation, automated transfers from trust to operating accounts, sub-ledger management and IOLTA reporting. The Core plan costs $55 a month per user and includes time and expense tracking, e-payments, reporting, trust accounting, professional invoices and two-way QuickBooks Online sync. Pro costs $75 a month per user and adds custom invoice templates, LEDES files, user permissions and matter-based accounting. Contingency and Elite pricing is custom. An active QuickBooks Online subscription is required; QuickBooks Desktop is not supported. LeanLaw offers a 14-day trial without requiring a credit card, though migration and QuickStart onboarding begin with a paid subscription. The mobile app shows matter details but cannot create or edit matters. The public REST API supports programmatic access to clients, matters, time entries, expenses, invoices, users and codes.

LexNebulis is a free, self-hosted legal practice management platform for small law firms. It handles clients and matters, documents, calendars, time tracking, billing, and trust accounting. Legal workflows include conflict checks, client intake, document templates and generation, e-signature, and a client portal. Billing supports LEDES 1998B and 2000 export, UTBMS codes, and electronic invoice submission. Listed connections cover Stripe and LawPay payments, QuickBooks and CSV accounting export, and Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive storage. Security features include encryption at rest and in transit, bcrypt password hashing, JWT authentication, and TOTP or WebAuthn/FIDO2 two-factor authentication. Its append-only audit log uses SHA-256 hash chaining to make tampering or deletion detectable. The software is free for commercial use under Apache License 2.0. Installation requires Docker and Docker Compose v2, at least 2 GB RAM, and at least 10 GB disk space. The guide specifies a Linux server and recommends Ubuntu 22.04 or later; macOS is specified for development. The project wiki describes a target range of 1 to 50 users.